THE TRIUMPH of LIBERALISM in WISCONSIN, 1846-1860 B
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ABSTRACT “THE EXTRAORDINARY FORCE AND SUCCESS OF INDIVIDUAL ENTERPRISE,” THE TRIUMPH OF LIBERALISM IN WISCONSIN, 1846-1860 by John Robert Herman Using legislative debates and print media, this thesis explores how voters in Wisconsin interpreted and then fully embraced liberal ideology during the mid-nineteenth century. In the span of less than two years between 1854 and 1855, the Republican Party emerged from non-existence to become the dominant party in Wisconsin. Widespread antislavery sentiment in the electorate contributed to the success of the Republican Party. But an antislavery party with broad appeal only emerged after Wisconsinites possessed a unified self-perception as uniquely progressive in their economy and government. Wisconsinites saw themselves as freer, more progressive, and more virtuous than people anywhere else. In turn, they believed that anything that individuals did out of their own economic self- interest was not only acceptable, but also aided in fostering an ordered and virtuous society. The Republican Party in Wisconsin emerged as voters looked for a northern party to protect and promote liberal ideals. “THE EXTRAORDINARY FORCE AND SUCCESS OF INDIVIDUAL ENTERPRISE,” THE TRIUMPH OF LIBERALISM IN WISCONSIN, 1846-1860 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of History by John Robert Herman Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2014 Advisor_______________________ Andrew R.L. Cayton Reader_______________________ Amanda Kay McVety Reader_______________________ Kathryn V. Burns-Howard TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………….……..1 CHAPTER 1……………………………………………………………………………..17 CHAPTER 2……………………………………………………………………………..31 CHAPTER 3…………………………………………………………………………..…44 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………..……58 APPENDIX………………………………………………………………………..……..65 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………..………69 ii Introduction On a bitterly cold morning in Madison in January 1856, William Barstow was inaugurated for a second term as governor of Wisconsin. Barstow, a Democrat, had survived an incredibly close re-election campaign against Coles Bashford, a member of the upstart Republican Party. Third parties in Wisconsin, especially the Free-Soil Party, achieved some electoral success in congressional elections prior to the election of 1855. But Bashford’s win came in the first statewide election in which the Republican Party, formed just the year prior, competed as the primary opposition to the Democratic Party. With 72,553 total votes cast in the gubernatorial election, Barstow emerged victorious by just 157 votes.1 Democrats seemingly held off the Republican surge, at least momentarily. Any relief that Barstow felt from his victory in January of 1856 vanished quickly. Bashford disputed the election results, presenting his case to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Edward G. Ryan, Bashford’s attorney, challenged a number of questionable ballots that arrived in Madison after the official count. These late returns, some coming from non-existent precincts, were written on similar half-sheets of watermarked paper.2 On March 24, the supreme court voted unanimously that Bashford had fraudulently won the gubernatorial election. Armed with the ruling, Barstow and Ryan took over the executive office. Despite minor protest from Democratic state legislators, Wisconsin’s first Republican governor officially took office in 1856.3 Bashford’s victory inaugurated nearly four decades of Republican Party dominance in Wisconsin politics. Between the first gubernatorial win in 1855 and the election of 1890, Republicans won all but one of the biennial elections for governor. The same was true for Wisconsin’s presidential elections. Wisconsinites gave the first Republican candidate for President, John C. Frémont, 56 percent of its general vote in 1856. Until Democrat Grover Cleveland’s victory in Wisconsin in 1892, Republicans 1 James R. Donoghue, How Wisconsin Voted, 1848-1960 (Madison: Bureau of Government, University Extension Division, University of Wisconsin, 1962), 62. 2 Richard N. Current, The History of Wisconsin, Volume II: The Civil War Era, 1848- 1873 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976), 229. 3 Current, The History of Wisconsin, 230. 1 won at least 51 percent of the votes in all presidential elections.4 In the span of little more than a year, Republicans accomplished a rare feat in American politics; they created a new party capable of contesting general elections. Although the creation of new popular parties in the United States is historically important at any time, historians devote particular attention to Republicans because of the implications that followed in the wake of their rise. Historians stress the role the rise of the party played in leading the United States towards Civil War.5 The Second Party System, in which Whigs and Democrats competed as the dominant parties between roughly 1824 and 1856, functioned by suppressing sectional conflict. Disputes over economic issues framed much of the political debate. The Republican Party, however, explicitly resisted further compromise with the South concerning the further spread of slavery into new territory. By 1860, “the revolution was completed,” as Republicans won full control of the federal government despite making “no attempt to win southern support or even to make itself understood in the South.”6 The secession of some southern states quickly followed electoral success for Republicans. Although historians continue to debate the causes of the Civil War,7 the dissolution of the Second Party System in the 1850s stands as a pivotal point at which the strength of unity between North and South broke down. The dissolution of the Second Party System thus stands as an important political marker because of the rarity of party re-alignment, as well as an important development in the dominant event in the nineteenth century United States, the Civil War. As one of the first states where Republicans achieved electoral success, Wisconsin is a useful place to examine why northerners abandoned the Democratic and Whig Parties in favor of the 4 Election results from Donoghue, How Wisconsin Voted. For a complete list of presidential and gubernatorial election results, see Appendix, I-II. 5 Out of the vast scholarship connecting the rise of the Republican Party and the Civil War, some of the most important works are David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1976); Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1978); William E. Gienapp, The Rise of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) 6 Potter, The Impending Crisis, 446. 7 Marc Egnal, for example, argues that diverging economic interests between North and South were the primary cause of the Civil War in Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War (New York: Hill & Wang, 2009). 2 Republican Party. One interpretation is that a general antislavery sentiment among the voters of the state allowed Republicans to craft a new party dedicated to ending slavery. Michael McManus argues that throughout the pre-Civil War period, “what stands out most is the endurance of Liberty party principles as Free Soilers and their Republican successors adopted them.”8 McManus is buoyed by the fact that within Wisconsin, most citizens in the 1850s deplored slavery. Feeling threatened by the perceived encroachment of slavery on the North, some joined the Republican ranks believing they were finally taking a stand against the “slave power.” As one writer to the Milwaukee Daily American foreshadowed in 1856, “the war is inevitable, and I for one say let it come.”9 Although writing about Kansas, and not a national civil war, the writer’s sentiments were clear; from this point on he would shed blood to resist the South and slavery. Hatred for slavery only partly explains Republican successes in Wisconsin in the 1850s, however. Going to war to fight the expansion of slavery may have been a viable course of action for the writer to the Daily American, but many in Wisconsin did not see the war as either desirable or “inevitable.” The enslavement of African Americans was a distant problem. Of more immediate concern was maintaining Wisconsin on an abstract course of what they called progress. Between the late 1840s and 1850s, how Wisconsin’s citizens defined progress underwent a gradual transformation. During the Second Party System, Democrats nationally largely resisted new mechanisms for economic growth like banks, internal improvements, and corporations, as tools that enabled a small class of citizens to rule politically and socially. In addition to being unresponsive to the public, banks and railroad corporations threatened the localism and agriculturalism that were supposed to keep men virtuous in both public and private. As the dominant political party during the territorial period, which lasted from 1836-1848, Democratic rhetoric framed the political dialogue. However, Democratic hegemony started to erode as some within the party began to alter their vision of ideal economic conditions. Essentially, a majority of Wisconsinites by the 1850s believed that railroads, banks, and any other products of private enterprise 8 Michael J. McManus, Political Abolitionism in Wisconsin, 1840-1861 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1998), X. 9 Milwaukee Daily American, 3 September, 1856. 3 in an emerging industrial economy were safe in a free society.